A Crown of Wild Roses
by Steelfeathers
Summary: "Tom Riddle embodied everything that Hermione hated. He was cold, arrogant, ruthless, and cruel. Yet when he took her hand in his, she felt like a startled bird gently caged in a dragon's claw— surrounded by untold power, yet held with infinite tenderness." Hermione journeys into the past to find and destroy Voldemort's last remaining horcrux. (AU during DH)
1. Prologue

**Summary: **The chamber of secrets was never re-opened; Tom Riddle's diary was never found. Now Hermione must journey back in time to find and destroy Voldemort's first horcrux. But she soon discovers that the rules of time travel are far from set in stone, and even a heart of darkness can give birth to light - and love. (Hermione/Tom Riddle)

* * *

_"Every rose has its thorn, and every thorn its rose."_

* * *

~Prologue~

* * *

Agatha was old, even for a witch.

At a respectable 289 years of age, she felt perfectly entitled to take her time with her shopping, thank-you-very-much. And if anyone took issue with her tottering slowly among the book stacks at Florish and Botts, she wasn't afraid to hit them with a mean slug-barfing hex.

But today she found herself browsing the shelves of the famous bookstore at a particularly sedate pace. The whole place was crowded from wall to wall with gaggles of school children buying their books for the coming year at Hogwarts, and normally that would be enough to drive her to the peace and quiet of the apothecary, but today…

Something was going to happen in that crowded bookshop. She could feel the very fabric of time tremble around her in anticipation, twisting in on itself, thinning. There was a Crux here, a lynch-pin in the course of history, and Agatha knew that soon, very soon, an event would occur—or not occur- that would tip the very universe onto one path or another.

She had always been able to sense the coming of such events. They tickled the soles of her feet as they drew nearer, lingering in her nose with the smell of ozone after a lightning storm. She had felt the coming battle between Dumbledore and Grindelwald; and when the two mighty wizards had finally dueled, she felt history itself balancing of the knife-edge of fate, capable of tipping in either direction, knowing that where it fell would determine the path of the universe forever after.

And then Dumbledore had struck the winning blow, and the scent of apple-blossoms bloomed in her nose, and she breathed a sigh of relief. The darker path had not prevailed. Not then, anyway. There were always darker paths cropping up all over the place, but only rarely did they hold such importance as did that particular duel. Cruxes, Agatha liked to call them-the combination of a particular time and place where the fate of the world would be decided. Sometimes, like with Dumbledore's famous duel, everyone and their blind old aunt could tell that the outcome of the event would drastically change history.

Other times, like today, only barmy old Agatha with her pink slippers and flower bag knew that the world was at a Crux.

She watched carefully as a regal man with long blond hair—Lucius Malfoy, if she remembered correctly— strode into the shop. His nose wrinkled in discrete disdain and the noise and mess. She counted the tiny crows circling in his wake, and wondered if he knew that sorrow and suffering dogged his steps. He glowed faintly, like all those involved in a Crux tended to do.

The other parties involved in the Crux were already doing their own bit of loitering about the shop. A family of redheads, laughing and shoving each other. (Ah yes, the Weasleys. Quite a lovely bunch.) But the one who glowed the most brightly was a small little girl clutching a cauldron full of Lockhart's ridiculous books. She didn't look happy to be toting them about, smart child. The smell of sweetbread hovered about her, but a snake slithered through her shadows. A possibility.

The blonde man caught sight of the redhead family and moved towards them purposefully. There was something small and rectangular tucked beneath his coat that blazed with dark light. Agatha had never seen it's like before. So dark and terrible, and yet time and fate were snarled about it in tight knots. She shivered, and fought the urge to flee from that ugly, pulsing presence. How the rest of the people shuffling about the shop could be so thick, so blind to that unnatural thing, she didn't know.

But it was her unspoken duty to watch a Crux unfold, so stay and watch she did.

The blonde man and the redhead patriarch squared off against each other. Sharp pops of green static sizzled between then—a spicy verbal confrontation must have been taking place. If not for the unnatural dark thing inside the blonde man's robes, Agatha would have crept closer to hear the juicy gossip.

The blonde man suddenly reached down and extracted a book from the small girl's cauldron. Agatha held her breath. This was it. Fate thinned and stretched—and suddenly splintered, when the girl went red and angrily snatched her book back, stuffing it into her cauldron again. The blonde man looked only mildly taken aback on the surface, but underneath Agatha could see the pulsing red veins of thwarted ambitions.

The universe wobbled and reeled, fate trying to pull events back on course, trying to arrange for the blonde man to deposit his awful burden in the girl's cauldron….but then a hulking giant of a man was there, coming between them. More green sparks flew, and the blonde man was hustled out of the shop.

Time gave one last heave, then settled and stilled. The lines of fate smoothed out in their new course. The Crux had ended.

Agatha found herself letting out a shaky breath of mingled relief and trepidation. The old way, the wide dark road that would have come to pass had the blonde man's burden made it into the girl's stack of books, faded away, like footprints in sand erased by the wind. The world was now set upon a different path, a narrow and twisting way, and she couldn't predict where it led.

But then, Agatha saw something on the new thorny way, something that caused a gentle smile to light up her face and good cheer to steal through her heart.

There, among the brambles and thorns of fear and suffering, bloomed a brilliant red rose.

* * *

Author's note:

For those of you who only skimmed over this prologue chapter (don't do that, bad reader), this is the scene in the second Harry Potter book where Lucius Malfoy slips a certain diary into Ginny's stack of school books. For the purposes of this story, I'm trying a 'what-if' scenario: what if the chamber of secrets was never reopened, and Tom Riddle's diary never found and destroyed?

Something interesting is bound to happen, I'm sure.

8)


	2. Chapter 1

1.

* * *

The ornate box in her hands was small, almost dainty. Decorated with lacy gold designs over dark lacquered wood, it could have passed for an old-fashioned lady's trinket box, if not for the inscription carved into a tiny brass plate mounted on the top:

_The Way to Find Any Answer _

Hermione clenched her hands around the box, giving the lid one last ineffectual tug. As it had the previous hundred times she tried to pry open the lid, the box remained stubbornly sealed shut. There was no visible lock, but the box might as well have been carved from solid wood—no charm she could find in her stolen library books had allowed her to open it. Alohamora was less than useless. If not for the fact that she could hear something tiny rattling around inside when the box was shaken, she might have thought the postmortem gift was Dumbledore's idea of an obscure joke.

Giving a soft snarl of frustration, Hermione set the box down beside her on the table with a harsh _clack_ and turned her gaze to the swirling snow coming down outside the tent, breathing deeply.

Across the table, Harry looked up from taking notes from a book on shield spells. His gaze landed on the locked trinket box beside Hermione's hand, and he winced in sympathy.

"Any luck?" He queried lightly. Hermione was tempted to snap back, 'Obviously not,' but Harry was only trying to draw her out of her funk. She knew she had been sulking for days now, ever since she had discovered the second parting gift Dumbledore had left for her—shrunken down and hidden between the pages of Beedle the Bard's ancient book- and had utterly failed to find the secret to opening it.

Hermione heaved a sigh, turning back towards Harry and framing the obstinate little box with her hands.

"Not yet. I know there has to be a way to open this. I_ know_ it."

Once more she ran through her mental list of powerful unlocking charms, wondering if it would be worth it to try any of them for a fifth or sixth time. Maybe her wand motion was off…?

"Whatever's in there must be dead useful." Harry nodded in agreement. "The Way To Find Any Answer.' Sounds like some sort of powerful magical artifact. If it really _can _answer any question, maybe we could use it to find the last horcrux." Harry's eyes gleamed with flinty determination.

"Maybe. But first I have to figure out how to get this darn thing _open_." Hermione sighed again, and lifted her hands to rub her temples. The last horcrux. The last piece of Voldemort's shredded soul, bound to an artifact somewhere out there in the world. So long as even one horcrux existed, Voldemort could never really be killed. But the cunning dark wizard had gone to great lengths to hide his horcruxes where they could never be found, and to erase all knowledge of their very existence from the world. They had learned that Voldemort created seven horcurxes in total—a lucky number, to a wizard steeped in dark magic who sought to enslave the world. And at great cost, six of the seven had already been destroyed.

Now only the seventh remained. And Hermione sensed that the time they had to find it was running out.

_'The locket, the cup, the ring, the diadem, the snake…the boy…'_ Hermione recited silently, wincing as her mind brushed over the next to last horcrux. She stopped herself from looking at Harry's forehead, at the place where a terrible lightning-bolt shaped curse scar used to be. Until a stray flash of green light during a death-eater raid had caught Harry's foot and flung him once again towards death, no one—save perhaps Dumbledore—had realized that Harry himself had been turned into a horcrux, on the same night his parents had been murdered.

Hermione shivered as the memory of Harry's stiff, lifeless body rose like a specter in her mind. They had been caught at their latest hideout by a squad of death eaters, and by luck or fate Nagini had been with them, hiding in the body of some poor muggle woman. Rather than fleeing, Harry had decided to take the chance to destroy one of the most elusive horcruxes. His powerful blasting curse had struck Nagini full in the chest, shredding through dead human flesh and the scaly body underneath with ease. The backlash from the destroyed horcrux had been powerful enough to slam everyone in the room to the floor—the wave of oily black magic had even flung a hapless death eater out the window. In the confusion, Harry and Hermione had scrambled from the exit. They almost made it, until a hastily flung Avada Kedavra had caught Harry in the foot…

Hermione felt her hands clenching into fists under the table, and forced herself to relax, banishing the rest of the memory from her mind. Harry was here now, alive, and that was all that mattered. The horcrux clinging to his soul like a parasite had been stripped away by the killing curse, sparing Harry himself. Harry had returned to life on the hardwood floor, gasping out tales of train stations and talking with Dumbledore, and Hermione had never felt more like weeping in relief.

In the weeks afterward, Hermione might have been tempted to believe that Harry had merely dreamed his conversation with Dumbledore in an ethereal King's Cross, if not for the message he had passed on shortly after they had gotten to safety.

_ "Dumbledore had a message for me to give you, Hermione. He said, 'Tell Miss Granger to enjoy her trip, and that fair fortune will open doors. Oh, and please do remind her not to over think certain problems, especially regarding that clever little box.' Hermione, do you have any idea what he was talking about?" _

At the time, Hermione had not yet told Harry about her gift from Dumbledore. It was foolish of her, but she hadn't wanted him to see her struggling to open a silly little box without success. She just wished Dumbledore had told Harry how to actually_ open_ the box, rather than dropping cryptic hints that drove her to the brink of insanity. And 'fair fortune will open doors'? That was completely less than useless. Fortune had been anything but on their side.

_'Maybe being dead gives you a broader perspective on existence, but I wish the dead had better advice,'_ She thought grimly. Gritting her teeth, she picked up the trinket box again to have another go at getting it open. Every day they spent wandering in circles looking for the seventh horcrux was another day that Voldemort walked the earth. They had to find it before the death eaters caught up with them again; Hermione doubted they would be quite so lucky a second time. Whatever rested within the box in her hand was the key to finding and destroying the last horcurx.

It _had _to be.

"The way to find any answer…the way to find any answer …" she muttered under her breath, turning the box around and around in her hands. "It's a clue, I just know it. But a clue to what?"

Harry put his book aside and picked up his wand.

"Let me give it a go?" he offered helpfully.

Hermione slid the box to him across the table.

Harry cleared this throat and tapped the top of the box with his wand.

"Alohamora."

He tried flipping open the lid with his other hand. It didn't budge an inch.

Hermione settled in to watch, propping up her head on her fist. They went through this routine almost daily. First Hermione would try out whatever new unlocking or diagnostic charm she had dug up—with the box stubbornly refusing to allow them to peek at its contents through magical or physical means—and then Harry would try his hand at it. At first she had hoped that Harry's more powerful spells would finally succeed in prying open the box, but short of using Reducto to blow it to pieces (which would likely also destroy whatever was inside) he hadn't been able to do anything more than her. Which was to say, exactly nothing.

"Aparecium! Revelio! _Dissendium_! _**Cistem Aperio**_!"

Harry's voice grew in volume and power and he continued to cast ineffectual spells, and Hermione knew that if he used the same level of forceful command with something like the Patronus charm, it would create a glowing silver stag and a blaze of light bright enough to ward off dementors for ten miles. Against Dumbledore's mystery box, however, he might as well have been babbling nonsense.

When the last echoes of his ringing incantation had faded, Harry sighed and slid the box back to Hermione, tucking his wand away again.

"I honestly don't think I'm going to be able to open it, Hermione, no matter what spell you find for me to try. Dumbledore gave it to you—maybe it will only respond to you?"

Hermione groaned in frustration and put her head straight down on the table.

"Maybe we shouldn't bother with it anymore. We've wasted so much time just trying to get one little box to open, and who knows if what's inside will help us find the last horcrux anyway."

"If what's inside is the 'way to find any answer', I'd say that's pretty important, Hermione." Harry pointed out. "We don't even know where to start looking for—"

"I know, I know." Hermione lifted her head off the table and reluctantly returned her attention back to the source of her ire. "If only Dumbledore had been more specific when he gave you that message…"

She traced her thumb over the engraved plate. _The Way to Find Any Answer. _Could Dumbledore have really possessed an artifact with that kind of power? If so, why hadn't he used it to defeat Voldemort during the first war?

Hermione continued to rub her thumb back and forth over the carved letters.

The Way to Find Any Answer… The Way to Find Any Answer…

What a strange phrasing. It almost felt like there was a second part that was missing. As if…

"Harry!" She cried, suddenly breathless with excitement. "I don't think it's a description of what's inside after all—what if it's a riddle instead?"

She grabbed the box in both hands and raised it so that she was eye-level with the tiny carved words.

"The way to find any answer…. What's the way to find any answer? Books? Um…learning? Listening?" She pried at the lid, but it remained stuck fast. Her excitement began to dim. But only slightly—Hermione knew she was on the right path, and that knowledge vibrated through her entire being like a plucked guitar string.

"Experience?" Harry suggested. But that didn't seem to be the answer to the riddle either.

"Observation! Experimentation! Um…exploring the world! Finding religion!" Nothing. The box stubbornly refused to open no matter how much she pushed and pulled and twisted the lid. Hermione forced herself to pause and take several deep, calming breaths. She may have been on the right path, but blurting things out at random wasn't going to get her anywhere. She would have to sit down and _think_. This wasn't a problem that could be solved by research and spells. It would take cunning.

She set the box back on the table and folded her hands under her chin.

'The way to find any answer is…. the way to find any answer_ is_….'

Her mind flashed through dozens of possibilities, discarding them almost as soon they appeared. It wouldn't be something restrictive, like books. Hermione knew that wasn't the only way to find an answer to a question, even if it was her preferred method. And it wouldn't be something obscure or arcane. Dumbledore wouldn't have given her this puzzle unless she already knew the answer.

_'Remind her not to over think certain problems, especially regarding that clever little box.'_ She wasn't trying to over think the problem, but apparently she couldn't help herself. Knowing Dumbledore, the answer to the riddle was something obvious.

"'The way to find any answer is'… think, think! It has to be something simple." She screwed her eyes shut, concentrating as hard as she could. She was the brightest witch in school—_she _was the one who solved unsolvable puzzles, _she_ was the one who could devise plans to get them out of almost any situation. She would not be defeated by a lock box!

"Let's see…" Harry thought aloud. "Maybe…ask someone the answer?"

His words pierced the fog in her brain like a shining arrow. That was it!

Hermione snatched the box back up and held it tight, feeling her palms go slick with excitement. "Harry, I could kiss you right now!" she exclaimed.

From her peripheral vision, she saw her friend flush bright red. "Um, thanks?"

But Hermione didn't have a thought to spare for his embarrassment. Not now that she knew what the riddle was asking for.

"It's so simple, I can't believe I didn't figure it out before! Don't you see, Harry?" She continued, a little breathless. "To way to find any answer is to _ask the right question_. Dumbledore must have known that we would need something very specific, but we would only be able to access it when we asked the right question!"

Harry leaned forward, suddenly serious and intent. His gaze fixed on the box.

"_Where is the last horcrux_?" He asked intently.

With a shaking hand, Hermione tried the lid—and bit back a bitter wave of disappointment when it remained as immovable as ever.

Harry's gaze flicked up to her face. "Hermione, it's your box. You try asking."

Hermione wet her lips. She felt herself trembling, though whether it was from excitement or fear or anticipation she couldn't tell.

"Where is the last horcrux?" She asked slowly, sternly, careful to pronounce every syllable in a perfectly clear voice. She tried once more to open the box, hands remarkably steady given the way she was shaking on the inside.

When it refused yet again to open and reveal its secret, disappointment rose like bile in her throat.

"How can we find the last horcrux?"she tried instead, "What can we use to find the last horcrux? Who can we ask about the seventh horcrux of he-who-must-not-be-named?"

Nothing, nothing, _nothing_. It felt like there was a stone somewhere under her ribs, weighing her down. Making it hard to breathe. Each time the box failed to respond, the stone lodged in her chest seemed to grow heavier.

Everything hinged on finding and destroying the last horcrux, and they had no leads to go on. Dumbledore's last gift to her had been a weak ray of hope during the weeks spent hiding in the woods and praying that they wouldn't have to bury another friend that day. But now, to find that even that meager hope had been snatched away…it was like seeing the lack of recognition, the lack of love, in her parents' eyes all over again. Another pillar of support had fallen away, and only with its absence did she realize just how heavily she used to lean upon it.

There was another horcrux out there somewhere in the world, and they were back to the beginning with no idea where to find it, or what it even was. While it existed, Voldemort could not be killed. While Voldemort could not be killed, the evil darkness would reign supreme. _Ad infinium_.

Hermione drew back her arm to hurl the box across the tent, and Harry caught her wrist in a gentle but firm grip. He pried it from the skeletal grip of her cold fingers and tucked it into his pants pocket, out of sight.

"Let's…take a break from that for a while," he suggested mildly, though she could see her own disappointment mirrored in his eyes.

"Yes, let's," she replied waspishly, "In fact, let's smash the bloody thing. Maybe that will get it open. If nothing else, we won't have to worry anymore about finding some way to please whatever blasted charm Dumbledore put on it."

Harry's lips tightened. "Brilliant idea, Hermione. Let's smash it to pieces! It's not like that may destroy our only lead on how to defeating you-know-who, after all."

"Don't you get it, Harry?" Hermione cried, jumping up from the table and beginning to pace. "The box wouldn't open because whatever Dumbledore put in there isn't going to help us find the last horcrux! It's _useless_!" Her foot lashed out at a chair as she passed, knocking it over. It made her feel marginally better, though the dark pit of despair she could feel growing in her gut still threatened to swallow her whole. Everyone was depending on them, and they were just as lost and out of ideas as they were a week ago. What were they going to _do_?

"Oh, there might be something else in there that can help us," Hermione conceded with bad grace when Harry opened his mouth, "But without the most important thing…" She abruptly sat straight down on the floor and covered her face with her hands, trying not to burst into tears. She wasn't some simpering first year with a ruined book or a broken broom. Not anymore. The death of friend was worth tears. Nothing else.

She jolted when Harry sat down beside her. She hadn't heard him move.

He quietly pulled one of her hands away from her face and held it in his. Hermione thought briefly about jerking away, but then after a moment she let out a long breath and lightly laced their fingers together.

They both looked out at the snow falling outside. It was growing dark, but the thick clouds overhead prevented the reds and golds and pinks of sunset from peeking through.

"I wish Ron were here." Hermione said suddenly, and it wasn't until the words were out of her mouth that she realized they were truth.

"Yeah, me too." Harry replied, with just a hint of bitterness. He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.

Ron had left again after destroying Salazar's locket and the horcrux within, supposedly to help his family go to ground to hide from the death eaters hunting them. And while Hermione knew that was probably true, she also knew that Ron wanted to get away from them—from her. The way he had looked at her after dealing with the locket, that hopeless, bitter cast to his eyes…like he knew she was going to betray him somehow, and there was nothing either of them could do about it. She didn't know what the locket had shown him, but whatever it was, it had finally doused the last embers of whatever used to be between them. That hurt a little, deep inside, but to her own shame Hermione mainly felt relief that their awkward relationship was finally over.

That didn't mean she didn't still want Ron-the-friend with her, though. But apparently Ron couldn't handle even that much.

Stupid eyes. There they went, getting all hot and itchy again. Completely ridiculous. There was a war to worry about—she shouldn't be crying over something as silly and meaningless as breaking up with her on-again-off-again boyfriend.

"We should try to get in contact with someone from the Order tomorrow," she suggested suddenly, trying to pull herself out of her funk. "We haven't heard from them in a while, and, well…"

"It would be nice to have to hear from everyone again. Make sure they're alright." Harry finished for her with a nod. "Tomorrow we can—what's that?" Harry's voice went sharp and suspicious. Hermione jerked her head up to follow his gaze. There was something moving out there in the distance. She squinted, tensing from head to toe. Whatever it was seemed to be coming closer. A dark shape appeared through the swirling snowstorm. As it approached, it resolved and darkened into the form of a tall man.

Hermione's heart skipped a beat, then picked up in double time. Harry dropped her hand and jumped to his feet, drawing his wand. Hermione scrambled to follow. She took a deep breath and held it, then slowly let it out, raising her occulmency shields to help her remain calm and focused. The person coming towards their warded tent could be just a random wanderer. Even if he wasn't, even if he was a death eater looking for them specifically, the wards she had plastered around the area meant that he would literally have to stumble right into their tent in order to find them.

But Hermione had lost too much in the past months to rely on naive optimism. She kept her wand in front of her, rock steady, the strongest blasting curse she knew perched on the edge of her tongue, ready to take the intruder by surprise—and hopefully kill him before he could kill them, or report where they were.

When another dark figure appeared out of the snowstorm, and then another, heading right toward them at a leisurely, arrogant pace, Hermione knew that it was no coincidence. Somehow the death eaters had found them.

She started to move towards the back exit of the tent—staying within would be a death trap—when Harry caught her wrist and pushed Dumbledore's puzzle box into her hand.

"Keep it with you."

Not willing to waste time arguing, she nodded and slipped it into her own pocket.

Moving as quickly and silently as she could, Hermione gathered what supplies she dared, including her expandable pouch, and slipped out the back of the tent, feeling Harry follow closely behind. As soon as she crossed the invisible threshold, she was assaulted by the bitter cold of the winter evening that the magic on the tent had held at bay. She quickly cast a silent warming charm on herself and Harry. It would be the worst sort of irony to escape from the approaching death eaters only to freeze in the snow.

"Vatican cameos." Harry murmured in her ear. Hermione gave a sharp nod of assent. There were several pass phrases they had devised that they could use to tell each other where to meet up without anyone knowing where they were going, if they happened to be overheard. Fixing the mountain cottage in Whales firmly in mind, Hermione spared a brief mental goodbye to all the supplies they would be leaving behind and prepared to apparate.

A shrill, sing-song voice suddenly rang out from behind them, echoing through the woods.

"Leaving so soon, my dears? You wouldn't leave your precious Ronnekins all alone, would you?"

Hermione froze, Harry stiffening beside her. Ron. They had Ron.

'_Oh no.'_

* * *

Author's note:

Before you guys start posting angry comments about me taking liberties with the time line, please note that I'm going to be making several assumptions for the purposes of this story:

1) Griffindor's sword is capable of destroying horcruxes all on its own. I always thought it seemed like overkill that it had to be imbued with basilisk venom first.

2) Tom Riddle did not open the Chamber of Secrets until his seventh year.

3) Harry, Hermione, and Ron were able to find and destroy the diadem horcrux before having to go on the run

4) Ron left the camping party again after destroying the locket

and, of course, 5) Dumbledore gave Hermione a second gift in his will.

Please bear with me if you find any additional misspellings or logical inconsistencies with the books. It's been many years since I last read Deathly Hallows, so I'm probably dropping the ball somewhere. If you find an error that's a big hairy deal, please leave me a comment telling me that I goofed up. If its a minor thing, chalk it up to the timeline differences branching from the chamber of secrets never being opened.

A few other notes...

-There will be no Ron/Dumbledore/Harry/Hermione/whoever bashing in this story. I think they are all fundamentally good people, even if they are flawed like all human beings.

-Yes, I know this particular idea has been done before. I don't really care. While I like several of the existing Hermone|Tom Riddle stories out there, none of them felt entirely right to me- Tom was either an OOC marshmellow, or the story depicted a dark and deeply unhealthy relationship. I decided that I wanted to write something different. Trust me when I say that this will not be your average Hermione-travels-to-the-past story in a lot of ways. You only _think_ you've read this one; I promise you, you haven't.


End file.
